Spanish police seize 42-piece dinner set... made entirely of cocaine

I'm surprised it would still be, um, snortable? after that.

That is interesting... I wonder what the process is to get it back to powder form. I'm thinking maybe a heat treat process (?); then there's the issue of the paint... is the paint also cocaine -- dyed (?) , and if not how is it isolated and seperated in the treatment process(?)... so many questions... can't help it, i'm always more curious about the means to the end...

from the looks of it, it must have been compressed under extreme pressure and possibly treated at a very high temp such as a kiln would treat greenware into ceramic...

if that is the case i guess they would simply put it through some sort of grinder to process it back into a fine powder.

as far as the paint goes, cocaine is always cut with something else. i read somewhere that pure cocaine doesn't mean 100% pure...

It still seems like blue and yellow cocaine wouldn't fetch as much as white. Or do they have a way to bleach it?

One thing the article doesn't say is how police found out that the dishes were made from cocaine. Did they try to have a cup of tea?

one helluva cup o tea.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23386646-details/Cocaine+plot+mastermind+jailed+for+18+years/article.do

A former public schoolboy was jailed yesterday for shipping £3million of cocaine from South America to his mother's home in Surrey.

In an audacious plot, Paul Sneath, 24, impregnated four ornate wooden doors with a liquid form of cocaine on a trip to Panama with his girlfriend.

He then had the doors delivered to his family's £1million home, leaving his mother Linda - who knew nothing of the scam - to pay for the shipping costs with her credit card.

Sneath then collected the doors and took them to a lock-up in East London where four Colombian accomplices would extract the cocaine from the wood using a cheese grater and industrial solvent.

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But the plot was foiled by an undercover police operation.

Mrs Sneath is said to be "devastated" and "utterly bewildered" by her son's involvement in the smuggling operation.

He was privately educated, studied at Bristol University and has no previous convictions.

He also recently inherited £250,000 after the death of his 63-year-old father, Brian, who ran a lucrative car leasing company.

Mrs Sneath is so mortified by the situation that she has been telling friends at her local golf club that her son has gone away for the "ski season."

Yesterday, before he was sentenced, she said: "It is a very hard time for us all at the moment. I don't know how it came to this. It's absurd."

A detective in the case said: 'He came from a privileged background, had a good private schooling and lived with his mother on a lovely estate.

"It is extraordinary that he planned and carried this out."

Sneath began planning the scam - described by detectives as 'astonishingly audacious' - as far back as the summer of 2005, Inner London Crown Court was told.

He had dropped out of Bristol University and was living with his mother in the village of Worplesdon, Surrey.

Police traced telephone contact between Sneath and the other gang members and began an undercover surveillance operation.

That July Sneath flew to Panama City via Houston, Texas, taking his girlfriend with him as cover.

They spent a week there during which time he visited a furniture store and bought four green doors with pictures of parrots carved into them for £2,000.

Sheets of plywood inside the doors were then "impregnated" with liquid cocaine. When the shipment arrived back in Surrey in January last year, Mrs Sneath had to pay £798 on her credit card for the shipping costs. Her son was away in Italy at the time and the doors were stored in her garage.

When he returned in April he dropped the doors off at a lock-up in Dalston, east London, where the Colombians were waiting to extract the drug.

Wearing forensic suits bought from a local hardware store, they planned to extract the cocaine from the plywood panels by shaving the surface using a cheese grater.

The fine shavings would then have been mixed with industrial solvent and heated - separating the wood from the cocaine.

Once dry, the gang would have been left with 17.3kilos of pure cocaine in powder form.

They were planning to cut it with other substances to triple its weight to around 52kilos - with a street value of more than £3.2million.

But officers from the Met's Specialist Crime Directorate swooped on the lock-up and arrested them before they could carry out the process.

Two of them were arrested while still wearing their protective suits and rubber gloves. Sneath was arrested later.

Detectives believe the men could have died from the toxic fumes if they had gone ahead. The process - common in South America - is usually carried out in the open air.

Sneath - described as a heavy cocaine user - pleaded not guilty at his trial last year. He admitted visiting Panama and buying the doors, but claimed he had not realised they contained cocaine.

He was found guilty in December last year. The Colombians - Johhny Mejia, 26, and Diego Tovar, 41, both of Islington, Luis Lopez, 27, of West Kensington and Migel Velasquez, 30, of Edgware - pleaded guilty in earlier hearings.

Police believe the drugs gang may have carried out the door scam before. One of the Colombian suspects had fitted another distinctive door in his own flat which had the same hollowed-out centre.

Acting Detective Chief Inspector Grant Johnson, from the Specialist Crime Directorate, said: "The process they were going to use to extract the drugs is one that is used in South America, but it is normally done outside. There is a good chance that had they used it in the confined lock up they would have died from the toxic chemicals it gives off."


http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23386646-details/Cocaine+plot+mastermind+jailed+for+18+years/article.do

Cheese graters and industrial solvent Yup, sounds appetizing.